


Up All Night To The Sun

by Burning_Nightingale



Category: Daft Punk Medley - Pentatonix (Music Video)
Genre: Cyberpunk, Cyborgs, Dystopia, F/M, Fantastic Racism, Far Future
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-16
Updated: 2014-06-16
Packaged: 2018-02-04 20:16:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1791853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Burning_Nightingale/pseuds/Burning_Nightingale
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One interesting night out at the cyborg haven 'Get Lucky'.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Up All Night To The Sun

**Author's Note:**

  * For [smokefall](https://archiveofourown.org/users/smokefall/gifts).



> There were many things I was trying to intimate about the setting here, but I think this story wanted to focus more on the characters. Hope this is something like what you were expecting! 
> 
> (Character's personalities in no way based on those of the real life members of the band, mainly because I have no idea what they're like, haha).

Try as he might, Bix couldn’t get the window to open.

“Give it a good tug,” Saffy said distractedly, focusing on the precise curl of her eyelashes in the mirror. “It’s always sticky.”

“I _am_ tugging it,” Bix muttered, yanking at the handle.

“What I wouldn’t give for automatic,” Saffy sighed.

“This far down the stacks?” Blye snorted from across the room. “You’re lucky you even _have_ windows.”

Finally, with a cracking noise, the window came free and slid open, letting in a blast of fume-filled air. Bix wrinkled his nose and backed away from the window. “There, it’s open,” he said to Saffy. “Are you happy now?”

“Relatively.” She finished off her eyelashes on one side, and then her eyes took on the glazed, unfocused look that meant she was surfing the eye-net.

Bix sighed and turned away. It wasn’t worth waiting for a ‘thank you’ from Saffy.

Across the room, Tro appeared from the tiny kitchen, holding three bottles of beer by the necks. He waved one in Bix’s direction. “Up for a bit of pre-gaming, my friend?” he said with a wide grin.

_Am I ever_ , Bix thought, striding the two or three steps it took to cross the tiny room and take the beer from Tro’s hand. Tro had only arrived ten minutes ago; before that Bix had been subjected to both Saffy and Flash in full-blown pre-big-night-panic mode. They were his friends, but they were also slaves to their own vanity, and he didn’t have time for any of that nonsense. “Cheers,” he grinned, clinking Tro’s bottle. Tro passed one down to Blye as well, who was lounging in the only armchair in the room. Tro settled onto a tiny, rickety-looking table while Bix opted for the floor.

“How long’s it gonna be, sweetheart?” Tro asked Saffy.

Saffy waved an airy hand, distracted by whatever she was looking at in her vision overlay. Bix could have logged in and tracked what she was doing; he was good with eye-net tricks like that. She was probably just messing around on Eyebook, though.

Flash appeared from his and Saffy’s bedroom, clutching a box in one hand. “Do you think this’ll be enough?” he asked her.

She disconnected from the eye-net and considered the box. “Sure,” she said after a pause. “You’ve still got a fairly good coverage from the last time, anyway.”

“What is that?” Blye asked in an undertone.

“Hair dye,” Tro answered. “Flash always redoes his hair a few hours before he goes on stage.”

“I’m pretty much done here,” Saffy said, “I’ll come and help you.”

“You’re a lifesaver, Saff,” Flash said as they moved back into the bedroom, heading for the cupboard-sized bathroom.

Flash and Saffy’s flat may have been tiny, but they chose it to meet before they went out because it was actually the biggest living space any of them had. Blye was new to the group, so Bix had never visited his flat, but apparently he had a tiny room in a flat shared with three other guys, none of whom he was on speaking terms with. Bix himself shared a petite flat with his sister and her boyfriend, who were usually adverse to him bringing over friends. Tro’s flat was less a series of rooms than one small square box, with a mattress on the floor and a shower and toilet shoved in one corner, protected by a curtain. He didn’t even have proper cooking facilities, just a removable burner that sat on the floor. “At least it has a window,” he would always joke. It did, but that didn’t mean it got a lot of light. Nowhere did, not this far down in the Undercity.

“So what’s this club we’re hitting?” Tro asked.

“It’s called _Get Lucky_ ,” Bix said. “Apparently it’s got a rep as a hangout spot for ‘borgs.”

“And your friend is playing?” Blye asked, motioning with his beer towards the other room.

“He just went solo,” Tro explained. “Had some bust-up with his previous group. One of them thought he was gonna get signed and wanted to go it alone.”

“Ah well,” Blye took a long swig of his beer, “Shit happens, man.”

“Ain’t that right,” Tro said, looking at the floor.

Bix had been friends with Tro for a long time; he could tell when something was up. “Something bothering you?” he asked.

Tro sighed. “Nothing serious. Just the boss being an ass again. You know what he’s like. I could do ten times the work my full counterparts do, and he’d _still_ yell at me.”

“It’s what they’re all like, bro,” Blye said, frowning. “I’m telling you, this farce of a bill going through right now, it’s all a distraction, just a big game of smoke and mirrors. It’s not gonna change shit. We need real _action_ , y’know.”

Bix shifted uneasily. This was the thing he didn’t like about Blye; he was passionately involved in politics, and there was something that unsettled him when he spoke about anything related to cyborg rights.

Tro, on the other hand, was totally taken in. “I feel you, man,” he said, leaning forward. “None of this shit we get put through is acceptable.”

Blye nodded and took another swig from his bottle. “Just you wait til tonight,” he said, “I know people down at _Lucky_.”

And if he’d been feeling trepidation about going out before, _that_ made him downright nervous. It wasn’t that cyborg rights were unimportant to him; there was just something _about_ Blye. He couldn’t put his finger on it. “Did you get your glasses?” he asked Tro, desperate for a subject change.

Tro blinked, then perked up. “Hell yeah.” He reached around and grabbed the plastic bag he’d brought the beers in and fished something out. “Check it, man.” The glasses were thick and darkly tinted, with silver embellishments and a strip of BlueBrite glow tube attached that went around his head.

“Nice,” Bix said with a grin, and Blye made a similar noise of approval.

“You got something?” Tro asked Blye.

Blye dug in the pocket of his jacket for a moment before bringing out another length of glow tube. Grinning, he fixed it into the top of one of his braids, near his forehead, and adjusted it so it hung over his shoulder. Tro gave him a thumbs up and turned to Bix. “I think you gotta wear the head thing, bro.”

Bix sighed and reached around for his jacket. When he found it, he pulled out his own length of tube, two circles that went around his head and crossed just under his eye. He pulled it on and spread his hands dramatically. “Good?”

“Gorgeous,” Tro laughed, and Blye snorted.

BlueBrite glow tube was a symbol. Adopted by the so-called ‘born’ cyborgs because it matched the colour of their eyes, it was a symbol of their identity, their reclaiming of who they were. Born cyborgs may have been tampered with by the government and then thrown away like they were worth less than trash, they may have been marked by blue eyes that no surgeon would ever be allowed to remove, but they could be proud in their defiance.

Saffy reappeared from the bedroom and sat down again in front of her mirror. The dressing table and mirror sat pushed up against the wall under the window, moved to the living room since they’d been taking up too much space in the bedroom. Saffy’s treasured and carefully cultivated collection of make-up sat in neatly organised patterns on the white surface. “Dye went well,” she commented. “We’ll need to be going soon, or we’ll be late.”

“We on the guest list?” Tro asked.

“Don’t worry about it, bro,” Blye said with a grin. “At the _Lucky_ , I can get you in free.”

Tro grinned, and Bix felt nerves in the pit of his stomach.

/

It took another fifteen minutes for Flash to complete getting ready. In that time Bix and Tro took a cigarette break, traversing the grimy hall and waiting while the lift pondered its way through eighteen floors before letting them out onto the cramped walkway that ran under Flash and Saffy’s building. They leant against the rail and lit up, steam rising through the metal crosshatch under their feet. All around, buildings blended into each other, perched and balanced precariously, with walkways hugging their walls and bridges spanning the spaces in-between, drops of hundreds and thousands of feet below the often unstable metal.

Tro took a long drag and looked out over the view. His face told Bix he was deep in thought. “Y’know, after my dad came in from the radio-wastes, he thought this place was a goddamn paradise,” he said quietly.

“Compared to the radio-wastes this is fucking utopia,” Bix snorted.

“I guess.” Tro looked down and tapped his cigarette against the railing, letting the ash fall away into the abyss. “He didn’t realize you could still get tampered with here in the city – just by man, not by nature.”

Bix looked away and frowned. “Our parents knew what they were doing when they gave us away to the Program,” he said. Tro may have been able to reminisce about his father, but Bix had never quite been able to banish the bitterness. His family hadn’t given his sister to the Program; she hadn’t been tampered with. She didn’t need to live her life just waiting for someone to comment on how unnatural she was.

“I know,” Tro said quietly. And he _did_ know – he and Bix had been friends since they’d been in the Program. They’d stuck with each other through the horrors of the shutdown, helped each other forge a life down here in the slums.

Bix might have said something – he didn’t know what – but the door clanked open behind them and the others emerged. Saffy was grinning, excited now, and dressed up to the nines. “Ready?” she asked, bouncing in place.

Bix remembered why he liked her so much in these moments; she was always so full of energy. “Lead the way,” he smiled.

/

_Get Lucky_ was about ten levels up, and a line snaked out from the door. Blye led them right past, grinned at the bouncer, and they were in. Flash excused himself to find the stage manager, and the others headed to the bar.

“One Pretime-Killer,” Saffy shouted to the bartender over the noise, “And one Marino.” Bix grinned; at least she remembered what he liked.

She handed him his drink when it came, winking and saying, “Next round’s on you!” He agreed with a nod and they clinked glasses, and he took a sip.

After fifteen minutes of scattered chatting and dancing, Saffy motioned towards the stage with her drink. “Don’t look now, but he’s on!”

Bix turned. Flash was swaggering onto the stage, light from the suspended control screens playing across his face as he waved and grinned at the crowd. They seemed in a good mood tonight; they crowded around the stage, cheering and yelling.

Something was off, though, and Bix couldn’t tell what it was. He glanced around. “Where’s Tro gone?” he asked.

Saffy glanced around too and shrugged. “Dunno, I can’t see him.”

Bix felt like something was wrong, but he didn’t have any time to pursue it. Flash had the microphone, was addressing the audience. They were cheering for him, which was a good sign.

Saffy grabbed his hand. “C’mon, let’s dance!” she yelled as the music kicked in.

Bix just sighed and followed her.

/

Flash’s set had been good, but Bix hadn’t been able to enjoy it properly. He hadn’t seen Tro since Flash had come on, and he hadn’t spotted Blye either. He remembered Blye’s comment about ‘knowing people’, and felt even worse.

Saffy was pouting at him. “You’re not being any fun.”

Bix shrugged apologetically. “I’m just worried about Tro.”

“He can handle himself, B. He’s probably just gone off with Blye. Y’know, they seem pretty tight for how long they’ve known each other.”

“I’ve noticed,” Bix said darkly.

Saffy laughed. “Don’t get jealous, B. Tro still likes you best.”

“It’s not who he likes best I’m worried about.”

“Then what-”

Before she could finish Flash appeared, picking her up and swinging her around. She yelled with laughter, and Flash was yelling something with her, incomprehensible. Then he shouted something which sounded like ‘drink!’, and he and Saffy began pushing through the crowd toward the bar.

Bix didn’t go with them; he felt sure now that he should find Tro. He searched around the small alcoves dotted at the edge of the room and came up with nothing. Tro didn’t seem to be hanging with any of the small groups that lined the dance floor either. There were, he noted, a lot of amputee ‘borgs around. While he and the group’s differences were internal aside from their eyes, amputee ‘borgs had proper metal replacement limbs, and suffered more discrimination for it. He’d heard bad stories about them, but no one appeared interested in bothering him tonight.

He followed the recognisable twin white and blue heads of hair back towards their owners, who it seemed were still standing at the bar. “You still owe me!” Saffy yelled when he reappeared, brandishing her glass at him.

Bix signalled the bartender. “Have you seen Tro?”

“I thought you were looking for him?”

“Well, I didn’t find him, obviously.”

Flash nodded over Bix’s shoulder. “Well, you gotta be blind, because he’s right there.”

Bix whipped round. Sure enough, Tro was weaving his way towards them through the crowd. Bix felt relief settle into his stomach. “No Blye?” Saffy asked when he reached them.

Bix felt worry ratchet up all over again at Tro’s expression. “Let’s not talk about that,” he said. “Listen, guys, I’m gonna go, I’m sorry.”

“I’ll join you,” Bix said quickly, over Saffy’s noise of protest.

“You _guys_ ,” Flash said, shaking his head and clapping Bix on the shoulder. “You’re turning into old men!”

“Good set,” Bix said instead of answering. Then he grabbed Tro’s arm. “Come on,” he said, tugging.

Tro seemed only too happy to go with him. They weaved through the heaving crowd and eventually made it out onto the packed walkway, managing to elbow their way through the crowd to a deserted, dingy alleyway round the back of the club.

“Alright,” Bix said, frowning, “What happened?”

“What happened with what?” Tro asked, feigning innocence.

“You went off to meet Blye’s friends,” Bix guessed.

Tro hung his head. “There’s no hiding anything from you, is there? Yeah, I met them. They weren’t what I expected.”

“Not what you expected how?”

Tro snorted. “Let’s just say they weren’t a peaceful protest group.”

Bix sighed. “Y’know, I thought-”

They were interrupted by a call of Tro’s name. Tro whipped his head round and groaned. “Goddamnit. We should have just split.”

Bix followed his gaze to see Blye walking up to them. “If you want-” he started.

But he never got to finish the sentence, as yells of outrage suddenly started round the corner. Blye stopped and looked back, frowned, and ran towards the noise.

Bix had always been too curious to be wholly safe. Tro called his name, but he was already away, running to follow Blye and see what the disturbance was.

Out on the main walkway, the crowds of revellers were scrambling out of the way as two men rolled on the ground, throwing punches. One yelled as another man joined the fight, punching wildly, and more guys suddenly appeared, all coming to the defence of one of the original fighters.

Bix felt more than saw Tro appear at his elbow. “They’re going to seriously hurt him,” he said urgently.

Tro was tugging his elbow. “Bix, those are the guys,” he said hurriedly, “The ones Blye introduced me too – look, he’s getting in there with them!” Bix hissed in a breath; it was true. Blye leapt into the fight with wild abandon, where most of the participants had somehow managed to get back on their feet. “They’re beating up a full,” Tro hissed. “We’ve gotta get outta here before the cops turn up. You know what they’re like.”

“Saffy and Flash-”

“They’re in the club, they’ll be alright. Come _on_.” Bix nodded; they ran.

They got to the level lift shaft in time to hear sirens beginning to wail in the distance.


End file.
